Iniika wrote:
Jesus f-ing CHRIST! $260 a month?! Do you know how much I pay a month?
$32.
For that little amount, I can walk into my doctors office any time I please and have them look at me for any form of itch, burn, pain, soreness, broken bone or severed limb.
Additional treatments, pharmacuticals, specialists, dental, eyeglasses, physiotherapy, hell, even accupuncture and massage are covered by my plan at work, and generally cost me only a fraction of the whole price of the proceedure ($450 orthotics cost me... $100).
Why population paying hundreds of dollars a month for coverage would continue to support such a system when the government is offering to subsidize that cost just sounds... irrational to put it gently. Does the recession not put the pinch on your pocket books? :/
Yes, it fucking well does put, not a pinch, but a goddamned choke-hold on my pocket book. I live in Massachusetts where the insurance and pharma industries have so shoved the state legislature down their crotches, that I am now forced by state law to have
private insurance, and if I don't have an employer who can provide it for me, then I must pay for it out of my own pocket. If I am actually indigent, I can qualify for a subsidy towards the cost, but if I am only made impoverished by the cost of the insurance I must buy (but not before that bill), then I don't qualify for any assistance or cost reduction whatsoever. Furthermore, this so-called "universal health coverage plan" -- this TRAVESTY of such a plan -- places ZERO restrictions on the private insurers who are making a fucking mint off this. They can still deny coverage at their sole discretion. They can still increase premiums by any amount they like every time a policy renews. Etc. Oh, and they even got the legislature to require after the fact -- as an amendment to the law -- that everybody in Mass has to buy prescription coverage, too, whether we need medications or not.
I have had to reduce the quality of my coverage twice so far (and change insurers once so far) just to be able to also afford rent and food while carrying this extra cost. Yeah, there's that free fucking market for us -- big
private business using the power of government to force private citizens to give their money to said private businesses. And if I don't? I have to account for my insurance coverage on my state income tax returns and if I don't have whatever the state decides to accept as "credible coverage" for a sufficient portion of the year, I will be hit with a tax penalty that the state refuses to define.
And THIS is what the federal government has been considering as a model for the nation. We are so fucking fucked, it's not even funny. I want a damned nationalized single payor system already, but I will absolutely NOT support any system that does not at the very least include a public optional, tax-funded system that is accessible by choice to all Americans, regardless of means.